Ultrasound-enabled topical anesthesia for pain reduction of phlebotomy for whole blood donation.
BACKGROUND
Ultrasound-facilitated delivery of topical anesthetics has been used to achieve effective anesthesia within 5 minutes for venipuncture and the insertion of intravenous access devices, but has never been studied for blood donation.


METHODS
This study was a single-center, prospective, randomized, sham treatment-controlled, single-blinded clinical evaluation. Repeat donors were randomly assigned to undergo treatment with ultrasound and topical anesthetic or sham ultrasound and placebo anesthetic before phlebotomy for whole blood donation. The primary outcome measures were pain assessments using the Verbal Categorical Scale (VCS) and the Visual Analogue Scale and the assessment of skin irritation at the target site.


RESULTS
One-hundred subjects were enrolled and all completed the study. Compared to the sham/placebo control group, donors receiving ultrasound/anesthetic had lower pain scores on the VCS (1.81 +/- 0.67 vs. 2.17 +/- 0.68; p = 0.01) and Visual Analog Scale (17.2 +/- 15.5 vs. 27.6 +/- 19.5; p = 0.006). The proportion of subjects in the treatment group who experienced skin irritation (8%) was similar to that in the control group (2%; p = 0.20).


CONCLUSIONS
Ultrasound-enhanced delivery of topical anesthetic was demonstrated to be a safe means of quickly achieving clinically meaningful reduction in the pain of phlebotomy for whole blood donation compared to sham/placebo treatment.
Stowell
Christopher P
CP
Department of Pathology, Blood Transfusion Service, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. cstowell@partners.org
Trieu
My-Quyen
MQ
Chuang
Han
H
Katz
Nathaniel
N
Quarrington
Carole
C
D000772:Anesthesia, Local / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D001782:Blood Donors; D006801:Humans; D010146:Pain / Q000517:prevention & control*; D018962:Phlebotomy / Q000009:adverse effects; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D014465:Ultrasonics